Figure 1.
The flowchart of the selection of the relevant articles.
Figure 2.
Summary of quality of the included studies, according to the QUADAS criteria (see Table S2 for details).
Table 1.
Results of the meta-analysis of the diagnostic markers for colorectal cancer.
Figure 3.
The ROC and forest plots of summary estimates of sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic marker CEA.
A is the ROC plot of the hierarchical summary estimates of sensitivity and specificity for CEA with 95% confidence and prediction ellipses. B and C are forest plots of sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic marker CEA for colorectal cancer plotted with a HSROC model. The size of the squares in B and C are proportional to the study size and weight for each study. The rhombus represents the pooled estimates, which are 0.461 (CI: 0.448–0.474) and 0.892 (CI: 0.882–0.902) for specificity and sensitivity, respectively.
Table 2.
The results of meta-analysis of prognostic makers for colorectal cancer.
Figure 4.
Meta-analysis plots of the progression-free and overall survival hazard ratios in individual trials.
A is the forest plot and B, C, and D are the “filled” funnel plots of OS, DFS, and the unclear group, respectively. The meta-analysis displayed a significant effect in favor of a high volume. The pooled and filled results are presented in Table 2.